


I... dunno.

by yarnwithpictures



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Autistic Pearl, i support the idea that lapis would be a little shit if not for the sad life so far, it's like side pearlapis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-02 18:13:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6577195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yarnwithpictures/pseuds/yarnwithpictures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The walk of shame isn't that bad alle time</p>
            </blockquote>





	I... dunno.

**Author's Note:**

> Go to 5i here ( http://nerds-are-cool.tumblr.com/post/133544218971/if-youre-struggling-for-au-ideas-take ) to see where I got the idea for this. This is another fic that I wrote over a messaging system, like 'super gonna do it.'

Pearl sniffed, the cold biting almost painfully at her nose.  She supposed her jacket actually being on- instead of draped over her arm- would help with that, but the pressure and angle of her forearm were comforting, and her shoulders felt prickly after the sleepless night she’d just had.  Considering this, she decided not to put it on despite the early morning chill.  

Pieces of the night previous came back to her again as she walked back to her apartment, making her shake her head in distaste.  She reminded herself not to forget to brush her teeth and take a shower when she finally got home.  

Pearl sighed as she made it to her apartment building and slumped up a flight of stairs before resolving to call an elevator.  A tiny stab of annoyance and worry had her messing with her fingers as she thought of Lapis again.  She’d be completely fine by herself.  As for after today, they didn’t see each other that much.  It would be easy for the two of them to forget this ever happened, and things would go back to normal in a while.  Maybe a month or so.  

The elevator pinged after about fifteen seconds.  It seemed to have been on the ground floor before Pearl had called it, but that was only a guess; it hadn’t taken long, and she couldn’t remember what the number at the top had said before the bell announcing its arrival had pushed her inside.  

There was another person in the elevator, looking just as disheveled as Pearl assumed she herself did.  Pearl was still wearing the collared shirt and high-waisted jeans she had been the day before, the three buttons that usually tightly connected the collar in the middle hanging apart from their slits and showing a bit of her collarbone.  She also probably smelled like an odd mixture of Lapis’ apartment and how she usually smelled, which she had always found disconcerting on other people.  Pearl doubted the stranger next to her would notice how she smelled, though.  

Pearl suddenly felt the need to make conversation.  The elevators in this building were always excruciatingly slow.  Sometimes they jolted into the vertical equivalent of a trot, but usually when you didn’t need it.  

“How was your evening?”  Pearl hoped she had enough spoons to sound polite, but noticed a few seconds after the words were out of her mouth that they were a little quieter than she had intended.  

Without missing a beat, a raspy, sleepy voice answered, “Well, I was awake for most of it, y’know what I’m sayin’?” in a sort of voice that suggested she meant it like  _ that. _  Pearl thought so, anyway.  She laughed nervously, not knowing how else to reply.  

“I really lost track of the time last night.”  

Pearl hummed in a way she hoped sounded like an agreement.  

“I was totally invested,” the woman yawned openly, “it was impossible for me to fall asleep.”  

“Speak for yourself,” shot out of Pearl’s mouth before she knew she was thinking it.  She resisted the urge to widen her eyes and tried to look like she’d actually wanted to do anything other than hum or grunt in reply.  

She felt the woman look over at her, “That bad?”

Pearl actually opened her mouth on purpose this time, but decided on, “Mm,” at the last second.  

“Really?  Why?”

“W-well, eh-” Pearl hadn’t felt like speaking at all a second ago, but now she felt the overwhelming need to complain.  

She cleared her throat and tried again, a little nervous.  “Well, you see,” she scratched at her forehead, more irritated with what she was about to say than worried about the fact that a stranger was going to hear it.  “It was just… kind of irritating… I mean,  _ she’s _ not, just what happened was, I guess.  I wouldn’t have gone to her apartment if she was irritating- mind you, it was sort of a split-second decision.”  

Pearl gave no sign that she’d noticed her neglect at mentioning who “she” was, or that the person she was telling this to seemed suddenly bewildered.  

“Anyway, she’s the kind of person to shove you against a wall, but she’s really uncoordinated, so we ended up breaking things on our way in.  It happened… twice? too, and I insisted on cleaning it up both times, because- I mean, broken glass is dangerous!” she puffed up like an indignant bird ruffling its feathers.  “It’s lucky her dog didn’t cut a paw.  Speaking of, after we got- more comfortable, she left the door open, so the dog walked in and just  _ stood _ there half the time we were in that room-”

“You switched rooms?”  The stout woman who served as Pearl’s audience seemed surprisingly  _ less _ uncomfortable than before (not that Pearl had noticed), and had stepped a little closer.  

“Well-” Pearl frowned as she began, making her lip curl, “not exactly.  We were,” Pearl grimaced in an odd way, “pretty into it, but then she stopped me and asked if we could get food?”

Her audience snorted.  

Pearl shook her head, “I think I sat there in shock until my phone started to ring.”

“You got a weird ringtone?”

“Well, I _wouldn’t_ _have_ if the person calling me wasn’t a complete-” Pearl bit her tongue before insulting one of her good friends, just because she was tired and generally disappointed with her evening.  “It was my friend, she set the tone to…” Pearl squinted hard enough to half close her eyes.  “Oh, I don’t know, it’s that song everyone associates with Shrek.”  

Pearl jumped when the woman laughed rather loudly and sidled a step closer with a large grin playing on her face.  “That’s  _ awesome.”   _

“I assure you, it wasn’t.”  

“Yeah, I meant-” the woman shook her head, “what did you do?”

“What did  _ she _ do, you mean!”  Pearl crossed her arms haughtily, forgetting about the coat draped over her arm.  “She got up and went to the kitchen before I even recovered from the phone thing.”

The woman laughed again.  

“I mean  _ really-  _ she didn’t even make her quesadilla with the right  _ cheese- _ not that I eat cheese in the first place, but I know  _ mozzarella _ is not exactly the best choice-”

“Oh my god,” the woman managed this through a fit of laughter that made her double over with a hand on her knee.  

“And you’re not gonna believe what she  _ sprinkled _ in it,” Pearl shivered, more for the theatrics now than actual distaste.  

The woman seemed to be having trouble standing up straight.  

“Peppermint.”

The woman looked up, and Pearl noticed dimples before she let her eyes wander to her shoulder, afraid of accidental eye contact that would surely stall her brain for a few seconds and steal her train of thought.  

“What,” she laughed incredulously, “like, the plant?”

“No!” Pearl puffed up her plumage again, “The  _ candy! _  Shards of it just sprinkled in there like it was chunky oregano or something-” 

The woman choked and doubled over again, and Pearl started to laugh, too.  “That wasn’t even the weirdest part about the food thing.”

The woman looked up again, straightening a bit.  “What the hell could she beat that with?”

“She drank marinara sauce- or, that’s what it looked like, anyway.”

The woman smiled at her in a different sort of way, “No.”

“Yes,” Pearl said defiantly, “It was sitting in the fridge, in a shot glass, like it was on standby or something-”

There was another cackle before a fit of giggles set in and the woman started shaking her head.  “No  _ way  _ that happened _ ,  _ that’s too weird!” she hiccuped, “I don’t believe you.”  

“I swear to god.”

“No way.”

“I just swore to god.”

“Dude, no, that did  _ not _ happen.”

“Anyway,” Pearl led the way out of the elevator as it opened morosely, in contrast with the tone of the conversation that left it.  “So we go back and start doing stuff again.  It’s pretty okay, I’ve had better-”

The woman snorted at that, and Pearl half hoped she didn’t sound rude.  That feeling vanished almost immediately,  “But then she just-”

“Says somebody else’s name?”

“YEAH!”

“OH MY GOD, REALLY?”

“YEAH, HOW DID YOU GUESS THAT?”

“I DUNNO!”  The woman looked around and lowered her voice, but still seemingly excited.  “It was probably aliens or something.”  She said this in a hoarse whisper, Pearl realizing too late that they had probably woken the whole building.  

She followed the woman’s example and lowered her voice, “I don’t think aliens would bother with making us finish each other’s sentences.”

The woman waved her hand dismissively, “What name did this girl shout instead of yours?”

“Uhh… ‘Dana,’ I think.”

The woman chortled immediately, as if she recognized the name.  

“Do you know a ‘Dana’?”

“Yeah, from a TV show.  I get why she said that, at least,” she shrugged matter-of-factly, “I mean, Scully’s hot.”

Pearl recognized the character by her surname.  “Oh, don’t tell me that!  I can’t compete with a fictional character!”  

The woman laughed jovially, and by now Pearl had decided that she liked how it sounded.  

“What’s  _ your  _ name, anyway?  I didn’t ask.”

“Amethyst,” she held out a hand and gave Pearl’s a single firm shake before letting go.  

“Pearl.”

Amethyst smiled, “Cool.”

Pearl felt her train of thought slipping and grabbed at it before her words could follow.  She sort of jumped, blushing, and continued, “So anyway, she- finishes- and I decide I’d rather not do anything else- which turns out to be a good decision, because she falls asleep two seconds afterward.  And so I just left and came home- which is here.”  Pearl pointed robotically at the door to her apartment.  They’d been standing on the mat since Pearl had hastily continued and completed her story.  Amethyst didn’t seem to mind.  

There was a small silence, and Pearl was surprisingly comfortable enough to break it.  “Sooo… I’m assuming your evening was better than that?”

“Yeah, dude, I just stayed in and watched TV.”

Pearl stared blankly at Amethyst for a second, and then a line slowly formed between her brows.  Her expression grew from confused to horrified, and then she dropped it into her palms.  

Amethyst, on the other hand, was trying hard not to laugh, and finally let herself do so when Pearl hid her face in her hands.  “Hey, I was just joking about that, you were the one jumping to conclusions.”  

“What a great start to my morning, after such an awful night.”

“Aw, come on, it’s not that bad.  You’ve got a better date tonight.”  

Pearl regarded her blankly, peeking out from her hands, and then she blinked, her mouth falling open a little.  “Oh!  Y- wait, really?”

“Yeah- I mean if you’re not busy or anything.”  Amethyst’s voice and body language were confusingly contradictory.  Her hands rested calmly in her pockets, and she was putting more weight on one leg so that she could appear nonchalant, but her voice betrayed some nerves that she hadn’t been able to force down before speaking again.  

Pearl blinked at her, a small part of her not believing that this was happening at all.  “Y-eah, sure.”  

Amethyst’s dimples made an appearance again before she edged around Pearl and headed back to the elevator, “Sweet!  I… guess I’ll see you back here,” Amethyst glanced at the number on Pearl’s door, “Later.”

“Bye!” Pearl waved and dropped her coat, which she seemed to notice only after it hit her foot.  She bent down to get it and straightened up a bit too fast, she thought, but Amethyst was still grinning when the elevator pinged.  She got on, and then stuck her arm between the doors to wave.  

Pearl wrung the jacket with both hands as the doors shut, and then she spun around and hopped into the air for a second before just bouncing on the balls of her feet.  That had been fun.  

She searched around for her keys and felt her stomach plummet when she didn’t find them right away, but then scoffed and scooped them off the floor where her jacket had fallen.  The door shut gently behind her before she slumped against the other side and closed her eyes.  She muttered something like, “Peppermint,” disdainfully before hanging up her coat and heading off to bed.  

**Author's Note:**

> Amethyst stayed up all night watching The X-Files. Scully is her favorite.


End file.
